We can say “NO” to swine flu – any flu

Hi everyone,

Did you know that influenza is Italian for “influence” ? Are we going to let ourselves be influenced through fear into sickness?

First of all, a couple of medical-related stories that are worth reading:

[url]What’s Making Us Sick Is an Epidemic of Diagnoses[/url]
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For most Americans, the biggest health threat is not avian flu, West Nile or mad cow disease….

[url]Nocebo and nocebo effect[/url]

Ever since I had an instantaneous healing during a flu epidemic when I was a child, I have been able to see the powerlessness of this influence of fear (which is what contagion is) and have had many many more healings, normally as soon as the symptoms try to get a hold in my thinking.

Mary Baker Eddy describes this mental influence many times:
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The press unwittingly sends forth many sorrows and diseases among the human family. It does this by giving names to diseases and by printing long descriptions which mirror images of disease distinctly in thought. A new name for an ailment affects people like a Parisian name for a novel garment. Every one hastens to get it. A minutely described disease costs many a man his earthly days of comfort. What a price for human knowledge! (Science and Health 196)

We weep because others weep, we yawn because they yawn, and we have smallpox because others have it; but mortal mind, not matter, contains and carries the infection. When this mental contagion is understood, we shall be more careful of our mental conditions, and we shall avoid loquacious tattling about disease, as we would avoid advocating crime. Neither sympathy nor society should ever tempt us to cherish error in any form, and certainly we should not be error's advocate.

Disease arises, like other mental conditions, from association. Since it is a law of mortal mind that certain diseases should be regarded as contagious, this law obtains credit through association,--calling up the fear that creates the image of disease and its consequent manifestation in the body.

This fact in metaphysics is illustrated by the following incident: A man was made to believe that he occupied a bed where a cholera patient had died. Immediately the symptoms of this disease appeared, and the man died. The fact was, that he had not caught the cholera by material contact, because no cholera patient had been in that bed. (Science and Health 153)

We do have a choice. We are not helpless victims.

And now, here are a few metaphysical answers from about how to protect our thinking against these impositions.
The first is an audio chat you can listen to:

[url] Sickness for sale: don't buy it![/url]

[COLOR="DarkGreen"]..The purpose of our discussion isn’t to criticize medical professionals or particular medications. What we really want to accomplish here is to talk about the times when a disease is represented so often and so vividly that it can give the impression that sickness is inevitable or inescapable, and how to guard your thoughts in those cases.

[url] Safe from plagues[/url]

[COLOR="DarkGreen"]We need to recognize and be alert to current postulations. Epidemiologists contend the world is awash in plagues: HIV-AIDS, West Nile Fever, SARS (respiratory infection), the current cholera epidemic in Southern Africa, as well as various visitations of influenza, which according to the Communicable Disease Center in Atlanta affects 5 to 20 percent of the American population each year, and leads to about 36,000 deaths a year.

Jolted by these statistics, I could see that protective prayer is a priority. And Christian Science teaches that when we’re confronted with the fear of disease or epidemic, it’s possible to address such medical prognostications and find immunity in a growing understanding of God, who is the all-knowing divine Mind.

[url] Safe 'in the secret place'[/url]

[COLOR="DarkGreen"]It has always interested me that flu, influenza (Italian for “influence”), got its name because it was thought the disease was influenced by the stars. While I don’t feel influenced by stars, this makes me ask, What is influencing me? Are news stories of an avian or bird flu pandemic convincing me that a pandemic of some kind cannot be prevented? That it is preordained?

We do have a choice. We are not helpless victims. God, Spirit, is the only real power.

Love and peace,

Judy